


Scattered Shards

by Abyssinia



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-06-30
Updated: 2007-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-09 00:21:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/80993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abyssinia/pseuds/Abyssinia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The only thing harder than losing his team was getting them back different.  Post-Moebius Fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scattered Shards

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Glimmers](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/446) by greensilver. 



> Written for gateverse_remix. Remix of Glimmers by greensilver.  
> Thanks to aurora_novarum and sg_fignewton for the betas. And, of course, to greensilver for writing the original story. Also thanks to synecdochic for running the remix.

On the bad days Daniel wonders whether he could mess up the timeline enough to stop himself from existing. He tells himself it isn't suicide if there's no pulled trigger, no spilled blood.

*

"Watcha doing?" When a shadow falls over his work, Daniel looks up into blue eyes obscured by scratched lenses and thick frames – anachronistic against the flowing Egyptian robes.

"Making the tablet," he tells her, turning back to the rough slab before him.

"What tablet?" she asks, plopping herself awkwardly onto the sand. Without looking he knows exactly how curiosity creases her forehead.

He sighs and falls back to sit on his heels. Samantha never understands when to leave him alone. "You said I wrote a tablet that the other me translated."

"Well, yeah, but we fixed the timeline so we don't need the tablet anymore."

"But if I don't write it, he'll never translate it and you guys will never be able to come back here and fix the timeline," Daniel explains to a space two feet to her left. It's easier to believe she's a stranger when he doesn't look at her.

"…maybe…" she says and he finally looks up to see her head cocked to the side in thought. "He said the dialect was obscure – like only someone who knew his research could have written it."

"I know what I'm doing," he snaps and she jolts at his words before standing and turning away. She is gone before he thinks to regret it.

*

They lost Teal'c first – a slip of a headcovering, an accidental flash of gold at the wrong time, and Ra's Jaffa proudly captured a spy from Apophis. Ra made an example, flaying him to within an inch of his life before shoving him through the Chapa'ai to Apophis's homeworld. Daniel saw the look on Jack and Sam's faces and shared their certainty that Teal'c would never let Apophis catch him alive.

*

O'Neill is telling a story, Samantha's head on his shoulder and her hand stroking up and down his arm. Daniel hasn't been paying attention and he jumps at the sudden laughter, looking up to see O'Neill bend over and kiss the top of Samantha's head. There's a dissonant wrongness about her wearing glasses while his are long broken, about seeing them openly close.

Sometimes he enjoys their company, can almost pretend they are the friends he knew. Other days they are more than he can handle, and he turns away from them, casting away these strangers who bear the faces of those who became his family. He's spent his entire life doomed to lose any family he's ever known.

He rises, ignoring the half-hearted tug Samantha gives to his robe, and steps outside into the Egyptian night where the chill of the desert punches into his ribs. The sand is shifting and treacherous, making for an ever-changing landscape, but there's one dune that has remained all these years. Daniel thinks it might mean something interesting is buried underneath but digging it up would destroy the dune. He can't do that.

*

There is an awning over his work space – a slab surrounded by chisels, mallets and camelhair brushes. He doesn't recognize his hands. The calluses from his P-90, his 9-mil, his zat, are long faded, replaced by those from day-to-day chores of coaxing life out of the desert. His palms look like they did after Abydos.

He wants to growl at the shadow that falls over his work. "Where did you learn how to do this?" Samantha asks, kneeling next to him in the shade.

"I apprenticed with a stonecarver one summer during college," he tells her, carefully marking lines with tiny scratches of his chisel. He has planned out what he will write and how to space it. He doesn't want to do this more than once.

"Can you teach me?" Samantha asks after watching him silently for several minutes. "I know no one can read it but…I need to do something." They are all restless.

*

Jack and Teal'c drew up detailed plans for the rebellion. Daniel wanted to warn them about messing up the timeline and interfering where they shouldn't, but they finally seemed alive again and he couldn't take away that sense of purpose. So instead, as the only member of SG-1 who spoke Ancient Egyptian, he went among the villagers, assembling an army.

One night, after yet another revision of their plan, Sam asked what they wanted to do after.

"Get the timeship and go home," Jack stated matter-of-factly. Daniel wondered if that was the main reason for planning the rebellion – to return to the future as soon as possible.

"What if it doesn't work anymore?" he asked, playing devil's advocate.

Jack shrugged. "We go through the 'gate before they bury it. Less likely to mess things up if we don't stay on Earth, right?"

"I don't know," Sam allowed. "We might just change the timeline on a galactic scale."

"C'mon, Daniel, you always wanted to go back to Heliopolis," Jack said, looking for an ally for his scheme. "And, Carter, I'm sure we can find some interesting gadget to keep you excited. Teal'c and I can…go fishing."

Daniel allowed himself to dream for just a minute, settling into the idea of living a peaceful, scholarly life with his team beside him. There were worse ways this could end.

*

Daniel lies on the dune, imagining he can still feel the outline of Sam's body in the sand. The ground is cool beneath him and he lets his fingers run through the grit – sharp and smooth and falling fluidly from his grasp. The stars blink at him but he cannot name them. Jack and Sam lived in the sky. He preferred the ground.

When some of the lights are blotted out, he blinks to find Teal'c looming above him. "Daniel Jackson," the Jaffa says, inclining his head.

"Teal'c." Daniel makes a vague motion with his left hand and Teal'c sits, cross-legged as though beginning Kel'noreem. It makes Daniel miss Teal'c's quarters at SGC – hundreds of candles and straw mats in an underground room this Teal'c never knew.

Sitting up, Daniel mimics Teal'c's pose: legs crossed, back straight, hands limp on his knees. At Teal'c's raised eyebrow Daniel shrugs. "Teal'c…my Teal'c taught me. It helped me -" he hasn't told them much about his life and descending with an empty mind is not something he wants to discuss "- work through some stuff."

Teal'c inclines his head in a movement Daniel knows all too well. "You say he won freedom for all Jaffa. I would like to have seen it."

"He didn't have much time to enjoy it. The final victory was only weeks before we came here." Some days Daniel thinks that was the worst part – Teal'c finally achieving victory only to come here to live and die under Ra's shadow.

"But he died free," Teal'c states. They sit in mirrored poses as long minutes stretch out over the desert. Just when Daniel is sure Teal'c has entered a deep state of Kel'noreem, he opens his eyes and speaks. "My symbiote will mature within the year. You must ensure it does not take a host."

"Of course."

"I too will die free." The statement sends a jolt through Daniel's spine. He should have seen this coming – there is no tretonin here and no new symbiotes, even if Teal'c would take one. Of course he will lose Teal'c again

*

The first month was bad. Daniel had a competition with Sam over who could be the most guilty. It was his fault because he proposed the idea. It was her fault because, against her better judgment, she approved of the plan. Teal'c bristled at being unable to rise against Ra and free his fellow Jaffa, and every third day Jack had an even crazier plan to retrieve the timeship.

When he considered that they also all spent the time mostly sick while adjusting to the food and water, along with Jack's tendency to make everyone miserable if he was miserable, Daniel was a little surprised they hadn't killed each other.

Two months in, Jack and Teal'c entered their tent with twin glints in their eyes. "No. Whatever you're planning, we can't do it," Sam said before Jack could open his mouth. "We can't risk messing up the timeline more than we probably already have."

"We already know there was a rebellion," Jack said, Teal'c behind him. "How do we know it wasn't caused by us coming back in time to lead it?"

It didn't take long for them to convince Sam. Daniel was pretty sure the inaction was rubbing at her just as badly as the rest of them.

In eight years worth of failed plans, this one turned out to be their worst.

*

Daniel switches between English and Egyptian as easily as breathing and, symbol by symbol, the tablet takes shape beneath his chisel. Samantha struggles with the language, and he isn't the most patient of teachers. Sometimes he thinks he's being too hard on her, but then he tells himself Sam would pick it up much faster.

She sits by his side with papyrus before her and a brush in her hand, black ink staining her fingers and the corner of her mouth. As each line of his tablet gets created, her papyrus only gets more jumbled and confused.

Finally she starts writing in English and at the end of each day he watches her burn the filled sheets. Sometimes he catches her watching him watch her, but he tries to avoid reading what's in her eyes.

*

Daniel watched, hidden by the rocks Jack had pushed him behind, as the Jaffa dragged Jack and Sam away. At least there was no worry about them messing up the timeline – even if Ra got them to talk, English didn't exist yet and nothing they said would be understood. He still flinched when the door slammed shut behind the patrol.

After a few days Ra's Jaffa tied them in the sand and left them to die, pouring water down their throats once a day to prolong the inevitable. Daniel lay on his belly on Sam's favorite dune, forced to silently witness with no way to help. He couldn't shake the image of Sam's terror-filled eyes as they dragged her away. Several hours in, Jack sensed his presence and shouted at Daniel to not risk saving them, to make sure what should happen did.

It didn't take long in this desert of searing days and freezing nights. Daniel had paid attention to Janet's classes back at SGC – first training civilians in basic first aid, then bringing all 'gate team members up to the level of field medic, and finally inventing her own classes to cover off-world situations. His ears rang with her lectures on the dangers of exposure and electrolyte imbalances. Sam got quiet near the end, only offering a vague murmur at dawn, but as delirium set in Jack shouted his defiance to the sky – calling for Sara, for Kawalksy, for Hammond, to god. He died with Charlie's name on his lips.

*

"How well did you know him?" O'Neill rarely approaches him without Samantha's encouragement. Daniel has been fine with that.

"As well as anyone could," Daniel says. It isn't worth pretending not to understand.

"Is this what he would have wanted for you?" O'Neill asks. "To cut yourself off from everyone?"

Daniel's left fist clenches in his robe but he continues calmly brushing dust off the tablet with his right hand. There are only a few lines left. "No. That was his specialty."

"Look, I don't have any right to tell you what to do but…"

Daniel cuts him off before he can finish. "No, you haven't earned that right."

As more hieroglyphs appear beneath his blade, he can feel O'Neill's gaze boring a hole between his shoulder blades. "I shut out the world when I lost my son. It was the stupidest thing I ever did. Giving up our lives for the dead doesn't bring them back."

The chisel drops from Daniel's hand, chipping off an edge of the tablet and sending a loud 'clang' to echo into the night. When he turns, O'Neill is already walking away

*

Each night Sam lay on top of the same dune as the sun slipped below the horizon, leeching the heat from the sand. Daniel watched from a distance as it painted her hair and skin with fire.

Once, when three stars appeared – twinkling next to Venus, Mars (Sam and Jack had renewed their penchant for astronomy) and a blood-red moon – he silently walked out to join her.

"What do you see?" he asked, sitting down and wrapping his arms around bent knees.

"Pretending," she told him, closing her eyes. "The cloud there looks like the Nox." She pointed at the empty sky.

He squinted for a minute in worried confusion before realizing what she was doing. Lying back, head to her head so his body formed a right angle with hers, he glanced at the sky, remembering clouds. "Over there -" he pointed "- the one with the horns? It looks like a minotaur."

When she didn't respond he turned his head to see her eyes squeezed shut, hands clenched into fists. A single tear slowly traced down her cheek toward her earlobe and he reached out to rub it away.

It gave him vertigo how fast she moved from lying down to standing ramrod straight. "It will never be grass," she whispered, back to him. He watched her walk away – body wavering in the mirages of the escaping heat – and rubbed the saltwater between thumb and forefinger.

This was all his fault.

*

Every letter has been painstakingly perfected and the edging designed to fit the current style. Surveying his work, Daniel can't guarantee it is identical to the tablet which sent their alternate selves on a trip to Ancient Egypt, but he's pretty sure any version of himself will be able to translate it and anyone else will have trouble.

Tomorrow he will bury it.

O'Neill and Samantha sit beside a fire with Teal'c, using flatbreads to scoop something out of bowls in front of them. He pauses just outside their circle of light and watches these people. They aren't his friends or his family, aren't those he left behind, those who died and left him. But they're all he has.

When he sits down, Samantha smiles at him and O'Neill hands him a strip of bread as Teal'c scoots over so he can get closer to the fire. He dips the bread into the closest bowl and chews on a mouthful of beanpaste before reaching to push up glasses he no longer owns.

"The first time we went through the stargate," he starts. Samantha's head snaps up and a small smile crosses O'Neill's lips. "We visited a planet called Abydos. It was me, Jack, several other soldiers, and a nuclear bomb."

The story continues long into the night and he has many more to fill all the endless nights to come.


End file.
